BaconOnAStick

You can buy drugs from Southpaw outside of Gate C after night games. (I made that up)

If the Sox and Cubs switched stadiums it would be downright bizarre and nobody would know what to make of it. Had the Cubs demolished Wrigley 25 years ago, and the Sox rehabbed instead of demolished Comiskey, things would be very different attendance-wise.

The City of Chicago has slight edge to the Sox. Cook County at large is about 50/50. There is nothing to steal. Sox fans just don't show up because the ballpark is ugly. The only tourists coming to the Cell are Tigers fans on road trips. There's your problem with attendance figures, the building sucks.

Buehrle makes a lot of sense as an inning eater, and there is zero doubt he'd draw fans to the park. I would like to see Carroll get a shot in the rotation. Perhaps Scotty has run out of whatever mojo-luck he's been using to not get whacked around in the bigs, or maybe he's found a way to get major leaguers out. The guy has been undeniably effective in whatever role the Sox have put him in.

The MLB is a binary league. You're either in the hunt for the playoffs (and thus a shot at the title) or you're not. Counting wins provided to individual players (I can't belive this is a thing) to some imaginary playoff number doesn't really work. Sox are trying to be in the half of the league competing as opposed to the other half that is sucking either on purpose or because they are the Padres. For how little I like the Frazier trade, at least it shows a commitment to constantly attempt dramatic improvements every offseason. I think its a lot easier to get excited about Todd Frazier and Brett Lawrie as positional upgrades than last year's additions of Melky and LaRoche to the offense. Of course Melky and LaRoche didn't cost the Sox a bunch of young players, just playing time that would be better used on young players. If Samardzija wasn't so terrible last year the Sox probably buy at the deadline and get 80+ wins and we're all freaking out because the team is "making the finishing touches" or something. Sox still have talent, my take is they have less than they had 24 hours ago, but I can still see the coming season as just as likely to be winner as a loser. Couple breaks go the Sox way (a Lawrie breakout would be massive) and the pitchers stay healthy... maybe they make a run.

They tried to get rid of LaRoche and couldn't.

Do you want me to migrate my annoying b****ing to this thread?

I loved the Swisher trade... I loved the Dunn signing... I was all about the moves last year... I'm tired of getting burned in nearly identical fashion every offseason. The Lawrie trade was a good trade. Sox gave up absolutely nothing for him and Lawrie is young enough to see a breakout year. Uike this deal where despite everyone's declarations could easily contain very good ballplayers dealt in exchange for Adam LaFrazier.

They are still a team that can catch fire because they have starting pitching in spades, but can easily wallow because Sale/Q/Rodon won't get any run support and everything collapses. Losing Samardzija is still probably the best move of this offseason.

Getting Cespedes would rekindle my excitement around the White Sox. Getting Upton would feel like having years added onto a prison sentence.

It's OK to have mediocre catchers if the rest of the lineup is good. It's even OK to have a SS with limited offensive ability if the rest of the lineup is good. It's not OK to have a corner OF who can't do anything well, and another who needs roids to be an above-average player. You can't have all of the above, plus a DH who is just cashing a check before he goes back down south to live out his Duck Dynasty fantasy. The Sox are roughly the same team they were yesterday.

Melky, Avi, Saladino, LaRoche and the catcher platoon is an impressive collection of bench talent, if that, that the Sox will have killing the rallies started by Lawrie, Frazier, Abreu and Eaton (for the purposes of this argument and my sanity going forward I'll just pretend Frazier and Lawrie will be fine ballplayers).

I want this to work very badly, but I've seen this before and other than Thome it hasn't worked. I would've been fine with Micah, Montas and something else other than Trayce. Not happy but still OK with it. Thompson was a cheap, low risk guy to start the season splitting AB's in RF. If he succeeded the Sox have him under control for years, if he didn't at least they tried. It's not like Thompson wouldve had some huge financial and prospects-in-a-trade investment tied up in him. Anderson and Owens aren't reasons to give up on Thompson, Sox can't just write off minor league call ups because they have been burned before and aren't on some arbitrary top 100 list. More than half the Sox lineup is still pretty worthless, would've rather seen a quantity of replacements at more positions than ransacking youthful replacements close to the majors to fill a vacancy they filled literally 2 weeks ago.

Hate this deal for a lot of reasons. 1. Avi - Eaton - Melky OF is all but confirmed. Another year of negative WAR from both corners really make acquiring Lawrie and Frazier pointless. The only internal option that maybe makes a splash just got traded for... 2. The next player to come to the White Sox and collapse. Frazier is about to cross the 30 barrier and look at his 2nd half splits last year. Look at how bad he was. Hard time seeing him turning it around, especially with the Sox track record of aging sluggers. 3. We gave up 3 dynamic players. Thompson is a great defender, Micah has that speed, Montas has the big fastball. These guys were all set to the contribute in different, meaningful ways and instead the Sox dealt them for the same exact kind of player we've seen every offseason since 2005.

You don't even need WAR to know Cespedes is the better player. The A's were a force with Cespedes and the instant he left they immediately turned into a mediocre team. Then he went to Detroit (his stay with Boston was meaningless) where he fueled their torrid start and kept them in playoff contention right up until they traded him. Then Cespedes pushed the Mets over the Nationals and led that team to the league lead in 2nd half offense. Cespedes = wins.

They're too busy thanking the heavens their version of Adam LaRoche is gone.

I can't believe you're listening.

Cespedes is the jewel of this offseason. Wherever he goes that team and the players around him in the lineup go to a different level. Would love to see the Sox aggresively pursue him.

Hey! An argument that's centered around what Montas can do for the White Sox! I like it. That makes sense, that may be a plan that has Montas winning games for the White Sox. Not a plan for him to get traded or live up to a completely unrealistic player comparison.

It's ludicrous fantasy to expect the White Sox to win games for a change, but not ludicrous fantasy to expect Frank Montas to develop into a Cy Young winner.

Not true and I can prove it.

I just get tired of the VALUE VALUE VALUE mentality and how the Sox should be more concerned about nurturing trade value than winning some freaking baseball games for the first time since 2012. If Frank Montas the bullpen pitcher can help this team win a very winnable AL Central then he should be up here in that capacity.

You can go up to Clark between Newport and Grace tonight and see how off base they are if you want.

Its extremely important that Frank Montas builds as much value as possible so the Sox can trade him away for the next position player about to fall off a cliff.

It wasn't crazy. The parade was a quarter the size of any given Blackhawks and yea, Sox fans were happy and talked the expected amount of s*** you'd expect in a two-team town, but it wasn't crazy. It wasn't even as crazy as the Royals celebration this year. If you really think life in Chicago won't be affected in a negative way I don't know what to tell you. You really want Boston fans with twice the racism but half the accents running around here like they own the world?